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"There are growing accounts of innovative, often collaborative institutional approaches to water management that seem to respond better to new challenges in supply and water quality management. While some describe these new institutional designs as a 'third way', as opposed to traditional state-centered or market-based modes, we find that the most salient features of it to characterize even those effective state or market designs. The fundamental ingredient, which is patterned relationships, is one that arises when social networks are built around the formal (state or market) institutions. The necessary plane of description is not on the dimension of structure (state, market, or otherwise) but in the nature and workings of these relational networks. We describe necessary features of these networks. We illustrate these points with a case study: the Environmental Water Account (EWA), a novel market-based program for negotiating water allocations around the San Francisco Bay-Delta (California, U.S.A.). We point out how this institution worked precisely because it was not merely a market-based program but, rather, built in features of an effective social network. In this way, we found a capacity of the EWA to adapt to the dynamic nature of water resources and needs, along with the uncertainties inherent in a complex social-ecological system." (author's abstract)

We argue that the social construction of target populations is an important, albeit overlooked, political phenomenon that should take its place in the study of public policy by political scientists. The theory contends that social constructions influence the policy agenda and the selection of policy tools, as well as the rationales that legitimate policy choices. Constructions become embedded in policy as messages that are absorbed by citizens and affect their orientations and participation. The theory is important because it helps explain why some groups are advantaged more than others independently of traditional notions of political power and how policy designs reinforce or alter such advantages. An understanding of social constructions of target populations augments conventional hypotheses about the dynamics of policy change, the determination of beneficiaries and losers, the reasons for differing levels and types of participation among target groups, and the role of policy in democracy.

Public policy almost always seeks to change the behavior of one or more target populations who are ostensibly linked to the problems the policy is seeking to address. This paper argues that statutory designers and agency officials almost always have a choice from among several potential target groups, and that institutional factors often influence them to make inappropriate choices. Statutory designers, who it is assumed are sensitive to electoral conditions, will tend to oversubscribe some policies by identifying too many targets, including some who are not linked to policy objectives at all. Under other conditions, they will under subscribe, excluding some target groups who would contribute considerably to achievement of policy goals. The institutional conditions and incentives faced by agencies differ from those of elected officials. Therefore, they tend to target policies differently. Under some conditions, agencies will attempt to correct problems introduced by statutory designers, but in other situations, the institutional incentives faced by agencies will only exacerbate the problems. Agencies are most likely to correct problems introduced by statutory designers when agencies have a high degree of professionalism and receive budgets and other rewards on the basis of "value added" evaluations.

ABSTRACTStatutory design is the source of many problems encountered in implementation, yet policy scholars have not made much headway in providing coherent and consistent advice for framing smarter statutes. There is a great deal of disagreement about how much discretion statutes should leave to implementers, and four distinct and conflicting schools of thought have emerged. This article advises that none of the perspectives is always correct and patterns for allocating discretion should take into account the implementation context. Contexts vary from statute to statute and may change for different policy elements within particular policies. The core elements in policy content are identified and linked in a scheme that is more comprehensive and relevant to policy results than previous work. The article also provides a 'value-added' conception of implementation in which the extent of discretion exercised by implementers is measured by changes they make in the core elements of policy.

A framework for statutory design is offered that includes structural aspects of policy content -- agents, target population, & objectives -- linked together by tools, rules, & assumptions or policy theories. Abstracting these design aspects allows for empirical measurement of the value added in implementation. Four schools of thought about how much discretion should be left to implementers -- Wilsonian, strong statutes, grass-roots, support building -- are described & critiqued. It is argued that no one approach is adequate for an effective statute, but that appropriate statutes are designed for the context in which they are to be implemented. Examples of statutes most likely to be implemented successfully in a variety of contexts are discussed. 1 Figure, 62 References. V. Wagener